“I may say things with the right intention, but more often than not, people will misconstrue it.”
Shahrukh Khan (1965) Indian actor, producer and television personality
From interview with Anshul Chaturvedi
[199806201726.KAA26569@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998
“I may say things with the right intention, but more often than not, people will misconstrue it.”
Shahrukh Khan (1965) Indian actor, producer and television personality
From interview with Anshul Chaturvedi
Seneca the Younger book Epistulae morales ad Lucilium
Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XIII: On Groundless Fears
Original: (la) Plura sunt, quae nos terrent quam quae premunt, et saepius opinione quam re laboramus.
“It often requires more courage to dare to do right than to fear to do wrong.”
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) Benedictine monk, philosopher, and prelate
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 123.
David Brin (1950) novelist, short story writer
A rant about stupidity... and the coming civil war... (2009)
Context: I've long felt that the best minds of the right had useful things to contribute to a national conversation — even if their overall habit of resistance to change proved wrongheaded, more often than right. At least, some of them had the beneficial knack of targeting and criticizing the worst liberal mistakes, and often forcing needful re-drafting.
That is, some did, way back in when decent republicans and democrats shared one aim — to negotiate better solutions for the republic.
Alas, today's Republican Establishment seems not only incapable but uninterested in negotiation or deliberation. It isn't just the dogmatism, or lockstep partisanship, or Koolaid fantasies spun-up by the Murdoch-Limbaugh hate machine. Heck, even though "culture war" is verifiably the worst direct treason against the United States of America since Fort Sumter, that isn't what boggles most.
It's the stupidity. The vast and nearly uniform dumbitudinousness of ignoring what has happened to conservatism, a transformation of nearly all of the salient traits of Barry Goldwater from:
Rudy Giuliani (1944–2001) American businessperson and politician, former mayor of New York City
While campaigning in Cincinnati, as quoted in The New York Times (11 August 2007)
Sarah Schulman (1958) American writer
Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair (2016)